The United States courts dealing with bankruptcy cases allow parties filing actions in connection with the cases to make those filings electronically. An electronic portal for filing is available for making the entries to post the filings, and the documents are delivered into the portal for the Bankruptcy Court in Adobe® PDF (“Portable Document Format) format. In order to identify the filing, the Court's portal further requires that the filing party identify the bankruptcy “Case Number,” choose within general categories the action being filed, and also to enter a free-form description of the filing—whether it be a motion, order, etc. All users of the filing portal must register an electronic address (i.e., an email address) for the court's use in making notifications of filings, notices or any other type of notification that the court initiates.
The electronic address is also the “official” notice address for counsel representing any party to a bankruptcy case. All such notifications from the federal court are, thus, delivered by email (following the initial notification from the court to the creditors named in the debtor's initiation of a bankruptcy chapter filing, which are made via U. S. mail). The notification emails are structured as to the data which is presented within the subject line and within the body of the email, and a link to one or more PDF files which embody an image (or images) of the filing itself is included in the body of the email. An intermediary company—PACER—provides subscription-based access to court proceeding records. The links to the PDF versions of the filed documents provide the access paths to the documents through PACER.
While the emails are structured as to the data which is presented regarding the filing which is the subject of the notification, the structure is limited to placement of information, but the data presented is subject to what has been input to the filing portal. The filing portal, as noted above, requires the identification upon entry of a filing by selection of the general type of filing and also by entry of the free-form description of the filing. Consequently, the information describing the filing which is contained within the notification email is not inherently identifiable. All filings are distributed through the electronic notification system and the filing party receives notification of its own filings in addition to those of other parties and petitioners. In addition, the filing party receives a confirmation email from the filing portal of the filing having been made, accepted and the fee charged. Therefore the filing party handles the filing twice after the filing is made where at least one (the notification) is generally unnecessarily. A law firm handling many bankruptcy cases, representing either creditors or debtors, or any other party to the bankruptcy action, receives notification of all filings related to the bankruptcy case. A determinative review of the notification email must typically be performed by trained personnel to ascertain whether the filing is pertinent to the receiving counsel's (and its client's) interest. This requires identification of the notification and, in particular, identification of a cross-reference of the case number to the client matter as well as determination of the pertinence to the recipient's interest in the case.
While the “self-filed” notifications (and corresponding confirmations) are readily identifiable, notifications of filings by other parties must be identified as to the nature of the filing and, in many cases, the specifics of the claims, assertions or evidence presented within the filings must be determined by a review of the actual filed documents contained in the PDF files. The debtor name and/or case number presented in the notification email are usable, for example, by the recipient to identify the recipient's case file. The links to the filed documents takes an initiator into PACER on a one-time-free access “pass” to view the PDFs associated with the filing (the “target” or “targets” of the link). During that one-time free access the document can be downloaded by a user through standard “Save Target As” browser functionality.
The nature of the filing is the catalyst for determination of all required bankruptcy related actions made by a counsel representing a creditor, as the creditor is the defendant in the action. Filing timeframes for reaction by a creditor of the debtor to debtor actions and/or to competing creditor actions exist which limit the time a creditor has available to make filings required to protect its interest. Consequently, thoroughness and expedience are paramount when handling the court notifications dealing with bankruptcy matters.
Unfortunately, thoroughness and expedience can be extremely difficult to achieve given 1) the time consuming steps required to cross-reference and identify the matter; 2) the complexity of the determinative review of the circumstances and details of the filings; 3) the volume of filing notifications which are received by a law firm specializing in bankruptcy representation; and 4) redundancy in notification which exacerbates the volume of notifications.